The question is ‘what is the bulls eye’ in the mission of the church?
1. Make NEW Disciples from those who currently aren’t disciples.
2. Teach all those who are disciples to obey all that Jesus called them to do and be.
Yes there are dozens of other important things but those of us who are already IN Jesus have a very specific goal or command we were given to carry out. It was in Jesus last words. He wanted to be sure we didn’t miss or forget it. Oh, we haven’t forgotten it. We quote it often. But we are missing tens of thousands of opportunities to carry it out.
I think it was Ed Stetzer who said "When everything is outreach, nothing is outreach."
We shoot a LOT of arrows in ministry; arrows aimed at making disciples. But most of them are either miss directed or just miss the target.
Mis directed? Most of our time is spent on those who are already Disciples, not ‘making NEW disciples’.
We offer classes, coffees, meetings, seminars, preaching etc with those who are already IN.
But the one big question is after all the sermons, books, classes, retreats, meetings, etc. how many of those disciples are competent to Go out and make New disciples from the pool of people surrounding them in their life; family, friends, co-workers, neighbors etc.
We shoot many, many arrows trying to hit the bulls eye; we hit some!!! In some cases a church can reach many and that can give the impression that they are "ON TARGET" but how many arrows never really get ‘aimed’ at those outside by our members? We have pretty much designed it so people have to come to us to hear, learn, etc.
I just saw a statement that said a ‘church that doesn’t evangelize will fossilize.’
Think about an Insurance company. It has a huge sales force; their task is to go and sell insurance. But they spend all their time with other sales people: Meetings, pep rally’s, flyers, reading books on how to sell, going over the manual time and again. Oh they do ‘go out’ but all they do is hand out flyers inviting people to the head quarters to hear the president talk about all the wonderful benefits of their insurance.
But they don’t go prepared to present, offer and sell their insurance.
I read the story in a business book some time ago. The President of an insurance company in New York was riding the elevator up the sky scraper to his offices. He struck up a conversation with another man in the elevator. Once learning that this man sold insurance, the other asked if he could show him the options because he really needed insurance. The President made an agreement with him.
He arrived at his office and called his sales force together. He told them he met a man on the elevator 30 minutes ago who worked in the same building and he wanted to buy insurance.. He had told the man that one of his agents would come to his office in a while. So he told the entire sales force to spread out through the building. Whoever found the man would get a great commission that day. He didn’t tell them where the man was located. They had to find him. So he dismissed the meeting and let them go. Later in the day he called them all back together. Yes, someone found the man. But they also sold like another 20+ policies as they went from office to office saying they were looking for a person who wanted to buy insurance.
What’s the lesson? Obvious. There are people all around us who are interested, yes, even in Jesus, but we have to go to them and we have to know how to engage them in a conversation that allows us to share Jesus with them.
If it is true, and I don’t see anything to make me think it isn’t, that 95% of Christians never share the Gospel with others…we are failing in a huge area. Yes we have callouses from shooting a lot. Oh we are busy, busy but as a group very, very few actually see results from their personal efforts in making NEW disciples.
Years ago I read about a broom company that only sold their brooms door to door. They bragged about their 25 hour ‘grueling’ training they did for their sales force; to sell brooms.
How many hours do you spend training your staff, leaders and members in how to GO and share the Gospel with others?
How sad it is to spend your whole life ‘shooting arrows’ in the name of Jesus but rarely if ever hitting the bulls eye. |
